The End of Two Strikes You’re Out: Good or Bad News for Grant Applicants?

Yesterday, NIH and AHRQ announced that they had changed its resubmission policy. While a given application is still allowed only one resubmission, if you are unsuccessful on the A1, you can then submit the application again as an A0 without having to substantially redesign the content and scope of the project. This “new submission” will be reviewed without any association to the previous attempts. There will be no Introduction to the Revised Application, no explanation of how you addressed the reviewers’ concerns. Even if reviewers have seen the application in prior review cycles, they will be instructed to review it as new. (However, reviewers are human, and one wonders if this is realistic. It’s like asking a juror to ignore evidence they just heard, and we know from social psychologists that that doesn’t actually work.) Of course, the idea is that an applicant will use previous reviewer comments to strengthen the application, thereby improving their odds of funding.

In 2009, as part of their Enhancing Peer Review project, NIH eliminated the A2 in what has been dubbed by unhappy researchers as the “Two Strikes You’re Out” policy. NIH eliminated the A2 because meritorious research was most likely funded on the A2, which meant quite a delay to funding. The resubmission policy did indeed result in an increase in the number of awards made on A0 applications (although most funded applications are successful on the A1). About the “Two Strikes You’re Out” policy, Deputy Director Dr. Sally Rockey states: “…we heard increasing concerns from the community about the impact of the policy on new investigators because finding new research directions can be quite difficult during this phase of their career. Also, established investigators voiced concern about the need to redirect the research focus of productive labs in order to submit future NIH applications.” For one of many discussions on Dr. Rockey’s blog about the decision to sunset the A2 submission, click here.

In theory, it would appear that one could submit the same idea endlessly until one finds the best way to sell it to reviewers. The policy will no doubt appeal to many researchers, because it is now up to a researcher to decide when it is time to abandon a given project. If one waits long enough, one could submit to the same study section after most of the members have turned over, thereby having a new set of reviewers to weigh in on the project. One risk I see is that sometimes a PI is so blindly enamored with their idea that they have difficulty hearing that the reviewers are trying to tell them that the idea is simply not fundable in any form; i.e., no amount of tinkering with the writing or the details will fix it. A PI could waste a lot of time if they cannot see when it is time to abandon an unfundable project.

Judging from the comments on some of the NIH blogs (for examples, click here), many reviewers are thrilled to have more submission attempts, while others are dismayed that this marks a return to a huge number of submissions and long delays to funding. What do you think?